Page 21 - JCAU-5-2

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Style evolution rules of Tibetan dwellings

Figure 3. Aerial view of an original village at the Jiuzhaigou World Heritage
Site. Source: Photo from Jiuzhaigou Valley Administration Bureau
Figure 5. A modern dwelling at the Jiuzhaigou World Heritage Site.
Source: Photo by the authors

set as variants. Then, considering that the characteristics
of dwellings are mainly reflected in the three aspects
of the building plan, structure, and constitution, and
based on the criteria of being reasonable, holistic, easy to
calculate, and realistic, a quantitative analysis framework
was constructed, which consisted of three categories:
building plan, structure, and constitution, as shown in
Table 2 (Qujijiancaim, 2009). Each category included
landmark indicators and characteristic calculation
indicators, from “type” to “indicator,” i.e., from geometry
to quantitative analysis, which would help to analyze and
Figure 4. A traditional dwelling at the Jiuzhaigou World Heritage Site. study the evolution of the residential landscape in a more
Source: Photo from Jiuzhaigou Valley Administration Bureau intuitive way. The change in the way of living is reflected
in the functional changes in the layout of the dwellings,
compiled. To study the development history and pattern and the proportion of functional spaces (P) can visually
of Tibetan dwellings in Jiuzhaigou, the follow-up team demonstrate this change (Lu, 2007). Space, as an objective
collated the field research data and classified the types of form of material existence, is expressed in terms of length,
dwellings into traditional, partially renovated A, partially width, and height, and the form ratio W: D:H, of which
renovated B, and modern, according to their different they are composed can reflect the change in the form of the
characteristics in terms of the building plan, structure, and dwelling’s appearance. The material of rammed earth is one
construction. This classification resulted in 20 traditional, of the characteristic materials of dwellings in Jiuzhaigou,
75 partially reconstructed A, 152 partially reconstructed B, compared to other Tibetan areas, and its proportion of the
and 73 modern dwellings in the study sample (Figure 6). front façade area (M), together with the window-to-wall
ratio, can reflect the richness of the façade (Xu et al., 2019).
2.3. Analysis methods Finally, the technical drawings of the dwellings were drawn
The architectural typology considers that building types in AutoCAD 2022, and the data were visualized in Excel,
reflect the evolution of entities and that there is a certain Auto Illustrator 2022, and Origin 2022.
“origin” for all types in history, called the “leading type”
(Canigia, 1979). This study simplified this “reading” of 3. Analysis
the evolution of building types into a “prototype-variant” 3.1. Analysis of architectural features of different
approach. First, based on the four types of dwellings, one styles
dwelling of each type in good condition was selected as a
sample for further study, making a total of four dwellings, 3.1.1. Traditional dwellings
as shown in Table 1. Second, one type of dwelling was Traditional dwellings, built before the opening of the scenic
set as the prototype, and the other three categories were area in 1984, have a history of more than 60 years (Figure 7).

Volume 5 Issue 2 (2023) 4 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0880